Contributors aren't experts on these things and neither are the inspectors. 

Are we professional or are we not?
Is it really acceptable to keyword, and inspect a dragonfly as a wasp? (Don't get me started).
I know it's not a specialist agency, but would it be acceptable to keyword a little girl as an old man*? And they are at least the same species.
If an agency accepts any sort of file, they should make some effort to make that genre accurately searchable.
*Nowadays probably 'yes', unless you get Keywordzilla.

Quote from: ShadySue on October 10, 2013, 18:24

Quote from: tickstock on October 10, 2013, 17:56

Contributors aren't experts on these things and neither are the inspectors. 

Are we professional or are we not?
Is it really acceptable to keyword, and inspect a dragonfly as a wasp? (Don't get me started).
I know it's not a specialist agency, but would it be acceptable to keyword a little girl as an old man*? And they are at least the same species.
If an agency accepts any sort of file, they should make some effort to make that genre accurately searchable.
*Nowadays probably 'yes', unless you get Keywordzilla.

I was talking about scientific names.  You asked "are we professional or not?", last time I asked that question around here I was told resoundingly we are not.

My real point, from which I digressed  , was why on earth iS would map a specific to a general term, thereby confounding buyers from seeing only what they wanted to see. Even if everyone had keyworded properly, iS is still mapping a specific species of wasp to all wasps. If a buyer just wants any wasp, they can search on wasp. If they want a specific, let them only see that specific. If it's not available or they don't like what's available, they can decide if they want to look for other wasps or look elsewhere if they need the correct species. Why p*ss off buyers?
Oh, I forgot, they're not there to serve buyers' needs. "The Buyers" are just a convenient hanger as an excuse for bizarre changes they make. Can anyone really believe that Collections, as implemented, meets the buyers needs in any way that was suggested at its introduction?
"Our buyers want simplicity and quality�but over time we�ve accumulated 7 collections at iStock. At this point, the differences and advantages between them are murky at best, especially from the customer�s vantage point. Bottom line � to be successful we need to help different customers with different needs find the content they are looking for at the price that reflects the quality of the image... "
Ooops, I digress again, and that was seriously off-thread.
Except that it does concern the issue of almost all the inspectors accepting almost any random keywords attached to any photo (I've wikied over 20 non-disputable nouns from some recent uploads, and put a note 'etc' in the notes to indicate questionable adjectives.)

Quote from: ShadySue on October 10, 2013, 18:24

Quote from: tickstock on October 10, 2013, 17:56

Contributors aren't experts on these things and neither are the inspectors. 

Are we professional or are we not?
Is it really acceptable to keyword, and inspect a dragonfly as a wasp? (Don't get me started).
I know it's not a specialist agency, but would it be acceptable to keyword a little girl as an old man*? And they are at least the same species.
If an agency accepts any sort of file, they should make some effort to make that genre accurately searchable.
*Nowadays probably 'yes', unless you get Keywordzilla.

I was talking about scientific names.  You asked "are we professional or not?", last time I asked that question around here I was told resoundingly we are not.

what a scandal! you are an iStock/GI exclusive, therefore you are a professional, don't let anyone tell you otherwise

I haven't looked at this issue as in depth as it sounds like you probably have but my guess is that since most people aren't experts on this there was an error.  This specific species is a 'common wasp' which sounds to me like a wasp, I guess the common wasp is not synonymous with wasp but I can see how that would be confusing or easily overlooked.  It should be a subcategory instead of a synonym but I think you can see how it would be easy to confuse that.  You could try to ask nicely if Lobo will let you back on the forums and then get this fixed.

This is by no means the only example where a specfic maps to a general. It makes no sense whatsover.
I have no means to contact Lobo, and I'm past caring. The site is largely pointless for me nowadays. 1 dl on each of Monday and Tuesday (XS and S respectively); 0 today. Yesterday I guess my deconnector failed  as I did manage to get up to a whole 9 dls. Ha - back in the day that would have been an average day, nowadays it's unbelievably excellent.

.

.

.

'berg' is a legitimate slang for iceberg -- in English, it's the only definition

from dictionary.com:

berg
  [burg] 

noun Oceanography . 
iceberg

Origin: 
1815�25;  by shortening

.

Quote from: ShadySue on October 10, 2013, 20:04

Quote from: tickstock on October 10, 2013, 19:53

Quote from: ShadySue on October 10, 2013, 19:52

Quote from: tickstock on October 10, 2013, 19:45

Quote from: ShadySue on October 10, 2013, 19:41

Quote from: tickstock on October 10, 2013, 19:16

You can probably contact him through Contributor Relations or send him a personal message on this site.  You really can't see how 'common wasp' gets confused with 'wasp'?

What would the point be? Anyway, I don't do grovelling.
No, I don't see it, but that's only one example out of very, very many.
If they hadn't mapped them, it would be a better seach for the buyer.
Anyway, I pointed out years ago that 'berg', German for 'mountain' maps to 'iceberg' and it still does, though to be fair, they did work on lots of my suggestions.
Again, that hardly matters with all the spam which gets in. They really don't care.

'berg' is all mountains, I don't see any icebergs

Good try, Horatio, but it's disingenuous all the same.
Look up iceberg and see all the bergs.
I said berg mapped to iceberg, not iceberg mapped to berg.

No, 'berg' maps to mountain.  You need to do the search in german (Deutsch) not in English, because you are searching using a german word.  It's the same at Shutterstock an English search of 'berg' gets icebergs but a german search of 'berg' gets mountains.

Watch my lips: I'm not complaining about there being icebergs in the berg search.
I'm complaining because searching on icebergs bring up lots of bergs.
If someone from Germany, Austria or Switzerland puts, correctly in German, berg meaning mountain, it automaps, with no other option, to Iceberg, as the system interprets the German word Berg as being US English (apparently) for 'iceberg'. So there are lots of Alpine mountains in the iceberg search.

(Screendumped from a recent upload by a German speaking contributor of a berg/mountain appearing in the iceberg search, which I'm not referencing as it's not his/her fault.)
And don't get me started on the glaciers which are wrongly keyworded iceberg. You might as well have a photo of a woman keyworded baby (which is not in the photo). But that's a spam issue, berg is a CV issue.

Anyway, past 2 a.m. and I'm going to have an early night.
Lala salama.

If you are German, switch to the German site and type in 'berg' it will come up with the correct German search.  You are searching the English word berg http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/berg
Noun

berg (plural bergs)

    Mountain, a large mass or hill.  [quotations ▼]
    An iceberg.  [quotations ▼]

If you go to the German site it will look for the German word.  It works the same way at Shutterstock.  Try your search here:  http://deutsch.istockphoto.com

OK, I know you want to defend iS, no matter what; but this takes the biscuit.

I am on the UK English site.
I search for 'iceberg' in UK English and I get a lot of alpine mountains in among the icebergs, glaciers, lettuces and cocktails.
When I go into any of the alpine mountains to wiki, I find that the German speaker has keyworded 'berg', presumably expecting it to be a mountain, but it turns it into an iceberg.
I can't wiki it from the UK English site, because that's the only option given from my side. Normally while I'm in the UK English site, if a German has used a wrong keyword, I can wiki it in the normal manner.

This is not a complaint about Team Metadata. I always found both Keywords and DuckSandwich to be extremely pleasant and helpful back in the day. They must be totally overstretched nowadays. I thought iS had given up on  keywording standards, based on what's currently coming through; but I heard of a bulk wiki they did at the beginning of this week. So I guess the policy must be 'let it all in and Team Metadata will sort it out'. I hope they expanded their staff to cope. Insanity.

I checked SS ('new') and although there are lettuces, glaciers, a seal and icy illustrations which are not icebergs, that's spam, the curse of all sites. I don't see any Alpine mountains / meadows without glaciers, which would have been keyworded 'berg'.

My argument wasn't orginally about search results. It was just an example of a bad CV mapping.
Searching by newest is only flawed because spam is getting through. Though Keywordzilla is still at it: this very morning I had 'disease' removed from a photo showing the signs a particular disease, explained with the correct scientific name in the description.
The fact that Newest is 'flawed' by spam and ignorance means it's not likely to be used much by buyers. I did say in my post that I was comparing New on SS with Newest on iS to illustrate the issue I was hightlighting.

The fact that best match penalises new files so they'll never be seen, and Fresh Match seems to have reverted to be as it was when it was announced, i.e. that it shows new-er-ish files which have built up keyword relevancy, and even then only on single word files, means that new files have virtually no hope of being found on any keyword with more than, say 400 or 600 hits, maybe even as few as 200. This has been the case for a year now - it was early October last year that I uploaded a batch of photos and found they sank to about mid-search within 48 hours of acceptance. But nowadays it's as soon as they get into the database.
iStock via Lobo has asserted that very few (of their) buyers use more than one keyword or keyword phrase when searching.
It has often been said the buyers only look at one or two pages of results, but I don't know how 'official' that is. My stats at Alamy suggest otherwise, but that's a different group of buyers.

Quote from: ShadySue on October 10, 2013, 19:41

Anyway, I pointed out years ago that 'berg', German for 'mountain' maps to 'iceberg' and it still does, though to be fair, they did work on lots of my suggestions.

This is what you were talking about ShadySue.  It is an English word and a German word, in English it means iceberg and in German it means mountain.  When you search on the English site it uses the English definition.  When you search on the German site it uses the German definition. 
English site using English word 'berg'
http://www.istockphoto.com/search/text/berg/filetypes/photos
German site using German word 'berg'
http://deutsch.istockphoto.com/search/text/berg/filetypes/photos

I know and understand that.
It's a simple translation mistake.
You keep choosing not to see, though I've repeated it many times, that I'm talking about the 'iceberg' search in English, not the 'berg' search in German or English.
It's odd that an American slang term or abbreviation should trump a 'proper' English translation.
It has a double whammy outcome:
If a German contributor correctly keywords 'berg' meaning mountain, on the UK English site that file shows up as iceberg, but on the UK English site, it doesn't show on a search for 'mountain'.
Check by searching newest on both, and if yours is different, it must be the geographical bias, because of the 'bergs' showing up on newest for iceberg, none is on the newest for mountain here.
E.g. on the top line for iceberg in the UK English search, by Newest, are several mountains on Gran Canaria uploaded by 'vora' and keyworded 'berg' in German.
These files do not show up on the UK English search for 'mountain'.

Oh, I give up. These files have also been keyworded 'berge', the German plural of berg, which maps to mountain  , but they still don't show up in the Mountain search, by newest, in the most recent 1000,whereupon file 1000.

So I tried an exclusive file, this time by querbeet. This has berg only, not berge, so it only maps to iceberg.
It's about halfway down the Newest search for iceberg, but again isn't in the most recent 1000 'mountains' in the UK 'English search, despite having been uploaded on the 7th, so with a newer acceptance date than vora's.

NB, I'm not dissing vora or querbeet, who have done nothing wrong. But I can't explain this problem without giving examples.

I guess I just don't see what the problem is, maybe I just can't keep up with you?  Are you talking about 'berge' now?  It seems to work as I would expect it to.  If you write German keywords on the German site then they map to the German meaning and if you type English words on the English site they map to the English meaning.

Have it your way. You are talking about something totally different, and you're not reading what I'm writing.
The loving scales that shield your eyes from anything bad about iS will keep you in your happy place and that's fine, and good, for you.